Ryan Murphy’s upcoming thriller series is shaping up to combine the salacious best of You and Gossip Girl. Though both shows star Penn Badgley and deal with themes of toxic obsession, they hail from two very different genres. You is a straight-up thriller about serial killer Joe Goldberg (Badgley), who uses romantic desire to justify unspeakable acts of violence. Meanwhile, Gossip Girl is a teen drama about the Upper East Side’s most privileged youth, whose secrets and scandals are documented and exposed by the titular anonymous blogger.
Interestingly, Badgley’s characters are where the shows have the most overlap. Though Gossip Girl‘s Dan Humphrey isn’t a cold-blooded murderer, he’s an outsider who’s every bit as obsessed with joining the elite ranks of his private school classmates as Joe is with wooing his latest love interest. Similarly, while Joe may claim moral high ground over the 1% and espouse “eat the rich” rhetoric, he jumps at the chance to be one of them, like when he ingratiates himself into one of London’s wealthiest circles, forming a power couple union with a billionaire in the You season 4 finale.
So, if shows about backstabbing cliques, rich people behaving badly, and serial killers are your thing, The Shards will definitely appeal. The series is the latest offering from the prolific TV creator Ryan Murphy and is set to premiere on FX and FX on Hulu on August 5, 2026. Based on the semiautobiographical novel of the same name by American Psycho‘s Bret Easton Ellis, The Shards centers on a group of affluent prep schoolers — think Gossip Girl with the Upper East Side of the 2000s swapped out for 1980s Los Angeles.
The Shards‘ teen characters even have their own Dan Humphrey in the form of Robert Mallory (Homer Gere), a magnetic and mysterious new transfer student who infiltrates the clique, and whose arrival coincides with a series of murders committed by an unknown serial killer named “the Trawler“. Tension ratchets up when Bret’s (Igby Rigney) paranoid suspicions of Robert cause division amongst his friends, leading to an inevitably bloody conclusion.
Based on this premise, The Shards is the perfect watch for those who haven’t been able to fill the thriller void since You ended last year. However, the new show’s release could benefit more than just fans of Joe Goldberg’s exploits.
The Shards Could Return Ryan Murphy To TV Glory
While Ryan Murphy is still one of the most prominent names in television, many of his recent series have fallen short of expectations, to say the least. Last year, Murphy’s new legal soap, All’s Fair, was notoriously panned by critics, sitting at a shocking 0% on Rotten Tomatoes throughout most of its run. (It’s since been elevated to 6%.) Though All’s Fair was greenlit for season 2 after strong viewership numbers, it’s certainly not in the same league as acclaimed Murphy series like Pose or the first few seasons of American Horror Story.
The Beauty, Murphy’s take on The Substance, received a much better 70% from pundits. However, after its premiere, numbers for the body-horror series steadily declined, and The Beauty season 2 likely will not happen as the cast options have since expired.
Even Love Story season 1, which depicted the true-story whirlwind romance and untimely deaths of John F. Kennedy Jr. (Paul Anthony Kelly) and Carolyn Bessette (Sarah Pidgeon), underperformed in some aspects. Though the series was a hit with the TikTok crowd, it wasn’t so much with Emmy voters, and Love Story was snubbed out of predicted Emmy nominations for Kelly and Naomi Watts, who played Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis.
While Love Story is the most successful out of these aforementioned shows, it’s worth noting that it was created by Connor Hines, not Murphy, with Murphy serving as executive producer. That’s what makes The Shards such a pivotal series for him. Whereas Murphy ventured into uncharted waters with All’s Fair, his first legal drama, The Shards is squarely in his wheelhouse. Murphy is at his best telling tales of the rich and beautiful, and he’s equally adept at creating outsider characters who are desperate to break in.
The Shards will release its first two episodes on Wednesday, August 5, at 9p.m. ET on FX and Hulu.
Furthermore, unlike his other recent flops, The Shards isn’t solely his creation; it’s an adaptation of an acclaimed novel from a celebrated author, who happens to be the series’s co-creator. Murphy and Ellis are certainly following the age-old adage, “Write what you know,” with The Shards, and hopefully the result will be juicy, campy TV magic.
- Release Date
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August 5, 2026
Cast
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Igby Rigney
Bret Easton Ellis
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Homer Gere
Robert Mallory
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Graham Campbell
Thom Wright
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Hayes Warner
Debbie Shaffer
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
